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I am interested in modelling the relationship between practice and performance both in laboratory tasks and field settings. I was interested in what existing research has examined how the performance of telephone call centre operators changes over time. I imagine call centre management systems would provide a very rich set of performance data on individual employees.

Thus, what do empirical studies have to say about the following:

What is the relationship between practice and call centre performance?

To what extent have studies been effective in controlling for task factors (e.g., whether it is a quiet or a busy shift; variation in task difficulty assigned to particular workers, etc) when modelling individual employee performance?

To what extent does performance change reflect constant improvement as a result of learning versus fluctuations due to changing motivation, effort, etc.?